Bonus Quilts

One of my clients, Eileen, frequently brings me quilts that use some of the same fabrics as her previous quilts. The last pair was one really big quilt, followed by a smaller one that used the same prints as the first, but mixed with a lot of white background. I chatted with her about it a bit, and she told me that all of her quilts have babies.

Every time she makes a quilt, she makes another, often smaller, quilt with the scraps. Sometimes it is a baby quilt. Sometimes it is a large quilt that has just a small amount of the focus fabric and a lot of negative space. They are always beautiful.

I didn’t think too much about this idea at first, but it has stayed with me, and I’ve been digesting it. I finally “got it” last week. This might be a good way to be a little bit more productive, and also keep my scrap stash from constantly growing.

I have been testing a pattern for my friend Reyna of BrambleBrains. I can’t share it yet, but I can share the baby it made!

Reyna helped me select the color palette. (I’m starting to think I could just make my co-workers choose the fabrics for all of my quilts in the future. I work with a very talented group of women at Gotham Quilts.) It makes me think of the end of summer in my Dad’s garden. It was just tomatoes everywhere, for weeks.

After I finished piecing D5 (more to come on that soon!) I had a good pile of scraps left. I had been entranced by a half log cabin pattern floating around on Instagram. Dana Bolyard’s version was particularly exciting. So, I decided to play.

I didn’t use a ruler to cut any of my strips. I hacked up some green into square-ish bits, added uneven logs, and just built until they felt large enough. I kept putting blocks up onto my wall, and I became more and more excited. I played with color gradations, going light to dark, dark to light, skipping steps, and just having fun. Once I had a fair number of blocks, defined by how high up on the wall I could reach, I started trimming.

The first batch, I trimmed to 10″ x 6″. Some of the logs became too skinny, so I switched to 10″ wide by whatever. Then I sewed them into vertical rows. I tried to match up smaller ones with larger ones, to make the rows even out. I ended up adding a few strips here and there, and a small group of strips on the last row, which was really short.

I decided to enlarge it with borders. Keeping in the spirit of my play, I didn’t measure the borders. My goal was to use up all of the last bit of green fabric. I made sure they were straight, but I didn’t worry about the width. I confess, I was a naughty quilter and just sewed them on and cut off the excess.

Now, my original plan was just to use this as the back of the quilt I had tested. Instagram had gotten into my head with #PartyintheQuiltBack . I’d have a cool back to share, scraps would be used rather than stashed, nice and clean. Mom caught wind of my plan, and protested. This baby was too cool to be just a back. It deserved to be it’s own quilt.

I did what any rational quilter does, and put the issue to a vote on social media. I lost. By a lot.

So, here it is, all quilted and finished as it’s own quilt. The quilting pattern is Bauhaus by Urban Elementz, which is perfect. Square-ish, but a little wonky. I love it. It does have a crap back, because, of course, I had to piece a back for it. Rather than solving a problem, it created a new one. On the plus side, I’m out of that green dot, and I think I’m out of the black print, too. The binding is scrappy, of course.

The batting was scraps, too! One of the best parts of having a longarm is how easy it is to use batting scraps. For a non-client, non-publication quilt, I will just lay batting scraps onto the backing, leaving a little overlap. Then I just quilt it all together.

I have several variations of this pattern drawn up, and at least two more versions planned. I love it, even though I usually find log cabins to be fairly boring.

Quilt Specs
Dimensions – 46″ x 51″
Fabric – Free Spirit Solids and Essex Linen
Batting – Warm & Natural
Pattern – Half Log Cabin
Quilting – Bauhaus by Urban Elementz
Thread – Pieced with Aurifil 50 weight in Dove, Quilted with SuperioriThreads Fantastico 5126, Oak Tree

I have a tiny pile of scraps left, and I’m tempted to squeak out one more little thing. We’ll have to see if I can find a coherent idea.

Do you regularly make quilts from your leftovers, or do you just stash your scraps?